greater the newspaper, the firmer the stand that it has taken for the
Allied cause. The New York _Times_, the weightiest and most
authoritative newspaper in America, has been both pro-Ally and
pro-British throughout the War, and has never shrunk from the delicate
task of interpreting satisfactorily to the British people the attitude
of the President.

Journalistic criticism of Great Britain in America is frequently
extremely candid, and not altogether unmerited. Occasionally it goes
too far; but the occasion usually arises from ignorance of the
situation, or the desire to score an epigrammatic point. For instance,
during the struggle for Verdun in the spring, a New York newspaper,
sufficiently well-conducted to have known better, published a cartoon
representing John Bull as standing aloof, but encouraging the French
to persevere in their efforts by parodying Nelson's phrase:--"England
expects that every Frenchman will do his duty." The truth of course
was that Sir Douglas Haig had offered General Joffre all the British
help that might be required. The offer was accepted to this extent,
that the British took over forty additional miles of trenches from
the French, thus setting free many divisions of French soldiers to
participate in a glorious and purely French victory.

But this sort of foolish calumny dies hard, together with such phrases
as:--"England is prepared to hold on, to the last Frenchman!" While
not strictly relevant to our present discussion, the following figures
may be of interest. In August 1914 the British Regular Army consisted
of about a hundred and fifty thousand men. To-day, British troops in
France number two million; in Salonica, a hundred and forty thousand;
in Egypt, a hundred and eighty thousand; in Mesopotamia, a hundred and
twenty thousand. The Navy absorbs another four hundred thousand,